


remembrance day

by ineternity



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cardiff Bay, Disabled Character, F/M, Pathetic fallacy, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Relationship Advice, Species Confusion, Spydoc, Time Lord bullshit, Vignette, Yearning, thirster - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/pseuds/ineternity
Summary: The Doctor wants to spend some time alone in the place she loves most in the Universe.An unwanted stranger ruins the peace but turns out to be the life advice guru she never knew she needed.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	remembrance day

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure why so many of my fics are from the Doctor’s perspective when I find it so hard to write? Why do I start these things??? I swear I started this in November before the Master had even appeared again and it turned into this- good stuff.
> 
> I was saving this for when the tag had a bit of a drought and since no one uploaded today I thought I'd chip in! Thank you all you writers for keeping me entertained, here is a short, very confusing fic to say thanks.

‘Poppy for you, love?’

She deposits a coin into the collection tin and picks up the small badge, pinning it to the centre of her lapel. She’s alone today- although she hadn’t planned to be. Besides her TARDIS there were few places she felt safe alone anymore, always a feeling that someone was two steps ahead of her- and he always was, she knew that.

Cardiff was somewhere she hadn’t visited for a very long time, not just because of the Rift but the reminders her past selves had left of their presence. Like the café on the pier, all shut up now and boarded over so you couldn’t see the tables inside. She’d been there once with Rose, Jack and Mickey, she’d remembered the war _then_ but the pain hadn’t bitten her like it does now.

In its day, she might have felt Torchwood thrumming beneath her feet as a hive of tunnels. Now there was silence. Not a single device or engine or _gun_.

The Doctor closes her eyes, lets her mind extend past the concrete under her feet to feel at the wreckage of the base- there’s nothing, still nothing.

‘Cheer up, might never happen.’

She’s snapped from her thoughts by a gruff voice beside her. Beneath her gaze is a small man leaning sideways at such an angle that his chair peels a little off the ground. He’s old- he looks it.

‘Yeah. Has happened.’

‘Sorry to hear it darlin.’

There’s fidgeting for a while whilst she settles again and gazes across the Bay, tracking the foam the boats leave behind. She’s sinking in, absorbing it all when the same voice snaps her out of it.

‘Whoever he was, he doesn’t deserve you.’ There’s a gravelly chuckle. She’s about to turn, maybe shout, maybe burst out crying- she hasn’t decided- when a small bouquet of red paper presents itself to her on the table.

Surprise, is that it? There’s a correct response to this that requires her to open her mouth which she isn’t doing right now.

‘Thank you.’ She croaks robotically.

He laughs throatily, sets his small pot of money down beside her mug of cocoa and rolls his wheelchair to sit beside her.

They stare out into the water and watch as a tour boat comes

‘He must have cocked up.’

‘Yeah.’ Simple answer. ‘They did.’

‘You’re not from Cardiff.’ It’s a blunt observation.

‘You are.’

He chuckles.

‘The High Council must be furious.’

She almost falls off the chair.

‘What?’

‘Gallifrey destroyed, their people killed. Again, Doctor.’

The Doctor stumbles back, her chair clangs noisily against the floor.

‘Sorry? Who are you?’

‘You could call me the Watcher.’ The man brings a cigar out of his jacket and draws it to his lips, ‘But that wouldn’t be quite accurate.’

‘Watcher?’ The Doctor puts a frantic finger to her pulses, ‘You can’t be here, not yet.’

‘I’m not here for you darlin.’

It doesn’t do much to calm her, much the opposite.

‘For them?’

He takes a long drag on his cigar, blows the smoke into the air like he’s cooling down hot soup.

‘That depends. He’ll have to make his mind up.’ The Watcher blinks slowly at the horizon, squinting with his old eyes at the white sky. ‘Tricky, this one.’

She narrows her eyes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ah. They did a right number on him, you see. Brains all over the place, poor lad. Can’t decide whether he’s coming or going- coming or going…’

‘Going where?’

‘Up there.’ The man points a finger towards the sky then thinks twice about it and turns it in the opposite direction so the finger points condemningly into the concrete beneath them, ‘Valhalla, Tartarus, the infinite Inferno. Whatever floats his boat.’

The Doctor winces, memories of The Master’s funeral pyre still somehow fresh in her head.

‘Nah.’ She says shakily, trying more to convince herself than the old man.

‘If I was a betting man, I’d tell you to hedge your bets. Four to One, Three to One, Two to One.’ With an assured motion, the stranger tips the remaining tobacco from the pipe into a small pile on the table. He almost chokes on the thick air the ash kicks up. ‘It’ll be a close race yet.’

‘It isn’t a game.’

‘He doesn’t think it is, love.’

The Doctor feels a pang of something flick at her hearts.

‘Did I- was it my fault?’

The Watcher doesn’t answer that but there’s something in his eyes that tells her everything she needs to know. He can’t give her the Master’s sentence but she knows; she is judge, jury and executioner.

‘Well, I’ll have to be going soon.’ He sighs, ‘Seems our man has caught on.’ The Watcher rests his hands on the wheels of the wheelchair in a vague notion of departure.

‘Stay, please. Just a while. I have questions.’

There is a chuckle and a knowing nod.

‘I was visited once, by your kind. They were pale, like they’d stopped growing somewhere- and malformed, chewed. You aren’t, why?’

‘We pupate. A bit like your Earth caterpillars. We are born at the start of the death, we die at its end.’ The Watcher chuckles again, deeper and sadder this time. ‘I am old, Doctor, I have been watching since my birth.’ Another sigh, a twirl of the cigar. ‘The one I watch begun his death at my birth. I may live on for some time, maybe not. Perhaps I can return to the Universe unneeded.’

She examines him, tries to look deep into those pupated eyes. There’s more to say, more to ask. She’s looked at a Watcher before, only in the throes of death so it’s unnerving to see one now so alive. The Master’s would be the exception, wouldn’t it.

Ask, Doctor. Remember.

_The Watcher was the Doctor all along._ Tegan’s final words to her fourth self.

Go on then. Do it. _Become Death_ , become me. Do it. Do it.

‘Did he mean it?’

The Watcher stares into the sky, inhales the air of the Bay.

‘I don’t know. You're asking the wrong question.’

‘What do I need to ask?’

‘I think you’re better asking elsewhere. From what I've seen, Doctor, you don’t do much to look into yourself.’

She tries then to look anywhere but him. Eyes wandering out towards the Bay again, promises of freedom whispering in sea waves and lapping at the Quay walls.

‘Any more questions, love? Or have I exhausted my welcome.’

‘No, no… You should go.’

‘Stunnin’. Last bit of advice, darlin’.’ The man nods in her direction. ‘Don’t waste your time on men. Look where that got me.’ He gestures to the wheelchair and The Doctor notices for the first time the prosthetics beneath his waist. ‘Tell him the things he needs to know.’

She shakes her head at him in confusion, half expecting an explanation, but the Watcher is already wheeling away.

The boats on Mermaid Quay rock and swish with the tide. Backwards. Forwards. Swish. Swash. The sea is calm today but later it will rock and rage.

She gets out the phone, unlocks it, her fingers pausing above the contact name.

‘O’. Master.

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking of writing my first smut scene as a sort of experiment? I'd have to edit loads, obviously, but I'd be really happy to break a tradition of being mainly a PG writer when I read stuff that isn't PG all the time? Anyway, let me know what you think.


End file.
